Underrated games

With the upcoming release of Beyond Good and Evil HD on XBLA it made me think how many other games have been undeservedly overlooked by people. So I thought I'd talk about one of the more recent games which was overlooked by many, Enslaved.

I don't know how many of you guys have played this but I hope that everyone who has realised what a great game it was. Ok so there was nothing groundbreaking gameplay wise, but neither was it badly done either. For those who haven't heard of this before I'll give you a brief overview.

Basically the game is loosely based on the Chinese novel Journey to the West, which most of us will know as the 70's tv show Monkey! The story revolves around two main characters, Monkey a burly acrobatic fighter and Trip a tech savvy girl, brawn and brains respectively. The game begins with them both on a slave ship travelling to an unknown destination. They both escape and Trip places a Slaver band on Monkey pretty much forcing him to help protect her while she tries to get back home.

That's pretty much the long and short of it without giving away spoilers. There is only one other main character in the game, Pigsy a womanising junk dealer who is one of the funniest characters in games for quite awhile. You control Monkey throughout with Trip being controlled by the AI, though the AI is smart enough that you don't have to worry about Trip as she pretty much looks after herself quite well and if she does get attacked she can stun the enemies giving you plenty of time to save her. All the enemies are robots of one type or another and are simple enough to beat most of the time.

Combat consists of light and heavy attacks and comboing them together. You can upgrade and learn new techniques by gaining orbs scattered around the world. Travelling through the world itself consists of platforming with some puzzle solving to get Trip across gaps and hazards. Apart from the occasional vehicle section thats the majority of the games content.

All of this is done very well, Monkey's climbing is fluid and simple to accomplish and when you get comfortable with it, you'll be swinging across the landscape with ease. Due to some excellent character animation this looks fantastic. And speaking of animation brings me to another one of the games strong points, the characters themselves.

Monkey is both voiced and performed by Andy Serkis most famous for playing Gollum and unsurprisingly the motion capture used for Monkey is fantastic as is all the other characters. This gives the characters more life and depth than in most games on the market now. Given the majority of the game revolves around the partnership of Monkey and Trip the amount of effort put into the two characters shows well making you actually care about the characters as they're not your usual bland gaming characters.

The story itself is written by Alex Garland, writer of The Beach, 28 Days Later and Sunshine and as you can guess that means the story itself is pretty damn good. The only slight downer is the epilogue of the game which is a comes out of nowhere but still makes some sense.

All in all this was one of the best games released last year with a metacritic score of 82. As I stated although the gameplay is nothing inventive it is solid and well made and with a the story line so strong it helps as it doesn't put any blocks on enjoying it. So if you like games with great stories and simple enjoyable fun, I can't recommend Enslaved enough to you.



So I've spoken about one underrated game which has been released, does anyone else know of any titles which people deserve to know about and play which they might have missed due to bigger games overshadowing them, I'd be interested to now.

I think you're preaching to the converted here mate. Nearly everyone in GSA who's played that has loved it.

As for my own opinion of overlooked games I'd have to say Unreal Tournament III. It's very rare a shooter gets a look in these days unless it's named Call of Duty.
Unreal is one the originators of online shooting and still sets the standards today for some.
III has everything you could possibly want from a shooter. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Warfare and some awesome massively destructive vehicles. No perks, no weapon unlocks and no bullshit!!
It's fast and frenetic and gives you no time to think. It's the perfect example of a twitch shooter. Look, see, shoot, kill. It's that simple! The graphics are glorious and gorious (sorry, a play on gory) It runs at an amazing speed and is seemless with no lag at all, multiplayer can be hit and miss if people try to host too many people beyond their limit.

This is a no holds barred frag fest. No single player story, other than some vague plot which is just an excuse to make you play single player versions of what you'll play online, which is what the meat of this game is all about. Playing online and fragging everybody.

For me, this is unsurpassed in the FPS genre. It does exactly what it says on the tin and doesn't try to tart itself up with unnecessary bollocks. It's just a shame that a lot of gamers these days are sheep who buy each and every CoD without giving other games a try.

Two of my favourite games on the 360 are Mirror's Edge and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Neither of which did particularly well and you can pick them up for unde a fiver each now. Both have massive replay value, I have completed each one five / six times

That is good to know about Enslaved. I've been tempted by Unreal a few times but wasn't sure what the community was like or whether it had died out.

I was hoping someone was going to mention Mirror's Edge though, good news is that EA have announced its still an important franchise to them so I'm guessing when DICE have finished with Battlefield that's what they're doing next. I may well push WET up my rental list actually, I remember the demo being pretty good.

I really like Condemned: Criminal Origins and Hitman: Blood Money. (SEE MY REVIEWS)!!!!

I've also heard quite a few people saying that Clive Barker's Jericho is an excellent shooter despite poor reviews, but I never played it! Has anyone else here experienced it??

Just bought Earth Defence Force which some people say is an amazing co-op shooter but I haven't had chance to play it yet!

Sorry to say the online community for Unreal is a complete ghost town.
I regularly host my own games and have open slots and quite often I may get lucky and have a few people join but I've also played for over an hour before now and had no one at all join. When you do get real people joining in the intensity racks up a whole other notch.
I still need all the cheevo's for playing and winning the ranked matches but can never find anyone else playing them. Which is why I get frustrated and go back to playing against bots in player matches

I may well pick up a copy of Unreal then as I would guess its pretty cheap now. If I do I'll let you know dude.


Colnecrusader, I've played Jericho. It's pretty good. Nice little shooter with a good story. The team aspect is quite good too, but you end up playing with just a couple of characters unless forced to as a few of them are a lot better than the others, particulary the sniper, though that may just be personal bias. I'd pick it up if you find it cheap, its not that long either.

kinmad4it wrote:
As for my own opinion of overlooked games I'd have to say Unreal Tournament III. It's very rare a shooter gets a look in these days unless it's named Call of Duty.
Unreal is one the originators of online shooting and still sets the standards today for some.
III has everything you could possibly want from a shooter. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Warfare and some awesome massively destructive vehicles. No perks, no weapon unlocks and no bullshit!!
It's fast and frenetic and gives you no time to think. It's the perfect example of a twitch shooter. Look, see, shoot, kill. It's that simple! The graphics are glorious and gorious (sorry, a play on gory) It runs at an amazing speed and is seemless with no lag at all, multiplayer can be hit and miss if people try to host too many people beyond their limit.

This is a no holds barred frag fest. No single player story, other than some vague plot which is just an excuse to make you play single player versions of what you'll play online, which is what the meat of this game is all about. Playing online and fragging everybody.

I loved that game I thought that was best multiplayer game I ever played on the Xbox I just glad I played when it first came out when there was a bit of a community. Everything in this multiplayer game was awesome, specially the vehicles, I loved that alien vehicle with its three legs and it turns into a ball and you can roll around like a bowling ball.
I also like simplicity of where you got no perks or attachment like in COD. Just like u say, you see it move, kill it. Just shame they didnt really advertize this game much when it came out.
The graphics was awesome and the some of the maps was well layed out too. For the bigger maps you dont need to find a vehicle to get back into action, you just jump on you hover board (Back to the Future style lol).

Good to see Mirrors Edge here, i thought it was brilliant and am really glad that EA arent totally scraping the franchise.

I also have wet from lovefilm at the moment may have to give it a go this weekend.

Orange box... for me as i only touched what it had to offer.

3 gamesi played portal mostly, and a little bit of half life, but it was portal that did my head in eventually and i traded it in.
I didn't even touch Team fortress 2, and i have been scolded for it many a time.. i'm on the look out for it again just for that as a few friends still play T.F2 and if i like it i may spread the joy with you lovley peeps too

Colne Crusader wrote:I really like Condemned: Criminal Origins and Hitman: Blood Money. (SEE MY REVIEWS)!!!!

I've also heard quite a few people saying that Clive Barker's Jericho is an excellent shooter despite poor reviews, but I never played it! Has anyone else here experienced it??

Just bought Earth Defence Force which some people say is an amazing co-op shooter but I haven't had chance to play it yet!

Jericho is dreadful
Its an easy ish 1000 but its a poor title

EDF is quite a laugh if you like shooting hoards of big bugs but its very very samey and the achs are mental tough
I played this for quite a while without unlocking a single ach and subsequently deleted it from my played list

I would avoid both titles tbh



And Tenlo is right Enslaved is brilliant and i reviewed it highly
Even better if you liked the 70s TV Series

I absolutely loved the darkness, great story, great graphics and very very clever. The only thing that was disappointing was the online, I was delighted to hear that the sequel won't be long in coming out

Jameseire85 wrote:I absolutely loved the darkness, great story, great graphics and very very clever. The only thing that was disappointing was the online, I was delighted to hear that the sequel won't be long in coming out

I have The Darkness, but I just can't get round to it like many others in my collection!!! I hear only good things about it!

I think the Darkness was a marmite game, you loved it or you hated it. Most loved it though, I've finished it though just need to do the multiplayer achievements when my mate gives it back. If anyone else wants these I'll organise a session to knock them out.

Tenlo wrote:I think the Darkness was a marmite game, you loved it or you hated it. Most loved it though, I've finished it though just need to do the multiplayer achievements when my mate gives it back. If anyone else wants these I'll organise a session to knock them out.

That would be good! I'd better dust it off then!

i really like flatout and still go online occasionally any game where you can fire your driver out of the windscreen and aim of bowling pins or a dart board is a winner in my book plus i loved the online destruction derby mode

I'm not sure if it can be called under-rated as such, as it's reviews are generally favourable. I am loving NBA Jam. There never seems to be anyone online playing it though, so the 2 online achievements that I have left to get might prove quite tricky!

FFXI I think is very underrated by both XBOX Mags and gamers, I think many don't appreciate the level Square Enix has gone to in some aspects of the game to kinda give in a realistic feel

ImperialSlayer wrote:FFXI I think is very underrated by both XBOX Mags and gamers, I think many don't appreciate the level Square Enix has gone to in some aspects of the game to kinda give in a realistic feel

Interesting you saying that, I'm trying to 100% all RPg's for Xbox this year and I've been worried about this one, I'm guessing you play it, is it still quite busy online and how much is the sub fee

Dark Sector is a decent game overlooked by quite a few people. The first time you take control of the blade in flight to take of an enemy head is awesome and doesn't get old for me.

The Darkness is another great game (single player anyway) I played it before I got my own profile and completed it but haven't had the time or inclination to play it fully again.